The promises of the government for leaps and bounds and doubling the performance in the use of money from European funds are history. Enchanting words of the Minister for EU Funds, Tomislav Donchev, spoken at the end of last year that the budget target in 2012 – Bulgaria to receive BGN3.8 billion from Brussels is completely realistic, now sounds rather like a joke. Concerns have arisen that the state will actually lose millions. Briefly the failure to absorb funds under EU’s operational programmes is complete, and there is simply no time for any change of the fact. The question is not whether, but how much money Bulgaria will lose.
According to some estimates, by the end of 2013 Bulgaria will have to say goodbye to BGN1.5 billion, as it will not be able to sign contracts for the amount. On December 31, 2015, when the last date for payment under current programs expires, the country’s balance will surely be at least BGN3 billion in the red. The reason is quite simple – many of the projects will not have been finished on time and will consequently be deprived of the right to get grant funding. The more gruesome picture will be revealed when the country ends up having to return a significant amount of money that has been acquired through fraud and irregularities. A report of the Institute for Legal Analysis and Research shows that a whopping 76% of the procedures related to EU funds in the municipalities have shown flaws. As is well known Brussels will surely take advantage of every opportunity to fill their ever thinner budget.
In fact, according to official figures by October 1, 2012 Bulgaria actually received from the EU only BGN4,324,161,499, or 27.57% of the total budget of the OPs, which is about BGN15.7 billion. It’s true that the sum is by BGN1.3 billion more than what was reported at the beginning of the year, but remain far from what was stipulated in the budget plans. If Bulgaria had stuck to them, for the nine months of the year it should have been able to acquire nearly three billion and the total value of absorbed funds should have reached BGN6 billion.
In a number of schemes the approved projects are far beyond the financial limits of the respective programme and some of them will not get any money, although the rulers report them as cases of success. Under the Environment OP the contracted funds are by 20 percent (or one billion lev) more than the extent of the whole programme budget. However, this is hardly a consolation since the actually paid out money account for 14.89% of the programme.
Recently, through a series of maneuvers and hidden arrangements the government seems to be trying to gloss over the total failure in the environment management of Minister Nona Karadzhova. There remains the impression that the purpose is only to take the money without doing any ecological projects. The BANKER weekly was the first to write how BGN200 million budget for ecology will be redirected to projects for purchase of new trams and underground trains in Sofia. Other cities ruled by members of GERB party, such as Varna, Burgas, Pleven and Stara Zagora, will also redirect be tens of millions from sector Water to the purchase of new buses and trolleys.
